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Hi everyone, I just became a premium user. I have to say I am very excited about all I know I’m going to learn here. I have been watching Brian YT excellent work. I beleive he is a gifted musician and teacher which is not an easy to find combination. I have been trying to learn CAGED major/minor apeggios. There’s a lot of make beleive in showbuis, as we all known and I always have a doubt about one thing.
Here’s that thing: Do you beleive that there are muscians that improvise and are consistently able to come up with a beautiful melody on the fly?
Thanks
RobbieThanks
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Hi Robbie !
Welcome to Active Melody!
Brian is a great teacher and yes, you will learn a great deal working in his lessons. There Weldon s the forum and monthly challenge.
In regards to your question on improv. If you know what key the song is in, and you know the minor and major pentatonic scale, you are good. Just apply notes from the five positions in that key, in a melodic way.
That’s where I think you have to feel the music…some heart and soul, driving your licks and lead. Does that make sense?
Again, welcome to Active Melody family Robbie!Don P.
Don P
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Hi Robbie,
Yes, if you know the underlying chord progression (which is easy in a standard 12 bar major or minor blues) it is possible to come up with a beautiful melodic solo on the fly.
It comes down to fretboard knowledge of understanding CAGED shapes and how the triads and arpeggios relate to the chord voicing and overlying scales. Licks are often created out of a combination of scale notes around chord and triad shapes. Knowing note names to see the root notes and having some sense of the intervals around the roots also helps. Getting some sense of timing and phrasing and a vocablulary of licks also helps, not to mention developing your ear.
Of course all these things take time and effort but that’s the journey. Going over Brian’s lessons week after week helps you start to see the bigger picture. He has various lessons that try to drill down on arpeggios, triads, CAGED to help speed the process.In my experience, some things don’t click until you’re ready so try to enjoy it along the way.
Really good advice that I didn’t always follow is try to make music with even the limited knowledge you have at the moment. It’s totally possible to make beautiful music with just a little major or minor pentatonic.
Having said all that, even Brian mentioned in a recent video that he might have been discouraged learning guitar in the YouTube era. We don’t know how many takes it took to get that polished piece out there, so I understand your skepticism. Check out the latest July challenge results where members did a first take improv over an assigned backing track.
John
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Hi John,
Wow, I love it how you understand exactly what I mean. Thank you for taking the time. Let me tell you where I am in the improvisation learning effort. I know and own the concept of pantetonic 5 shapes.
Also CAGED shapes. Triads all over the neck. I know how to go from major to minor pantetonics and back. Some Arpeggios. When I try to improvise still don’t know how to come up with something appealing. There is so much information on my mind that my analysis ends in paralysis. LOL or do something really really boring among all possibilities which is not wrong though.
EP564 basically addresses my problem it gives nice path to compose on the fly.
I love arpeggios and am learning dominant 7 arpeggios EP418. I am also looking at ep205 for the minor arpeggios, there is a very nice pdf with ep418 that shows the interval numbers for dominant 7 (both E and A shapes), but ep205 doesn’t include an equivalent chart for the minor arpeggios. It would be nice to have that interval number diagram for the minor arpeggios but I haven’t discovered it yet.
I love these lessons as they are so well thought and even the charts are very well desinged and information packed. Also when you print a color chart in black and white (because you don’t have color printer) it remains very valide and usefull. I really appriciate these details. I’m sorry I’ll force myself to end my novel right here.Thanks
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Hi Robbie,
You sound a bit like me. I think my biggest fault as a guitar player is that I felt like I had to know everything before I could make music rather than just trying to be creative with a limited pallette. I’m trying to be better about the hands on work and creativity.
I have to say that I have stopped with the charts and diagrams because I’ve become quite familliar with intervals around whatever root note I’m working with such that I can create any arpeggio or scale or chord voicing from first principles. I highly recommend thinking in intervals.
Brian has stated on more than one occasion that anything you’re looking for is within one fret of your current position. Triads and chord shapes have become much more important for me in negotiating the fret board.
John
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Hi Don,
The answer to your question is undoubtedly yes, as others have said; but getting there is a long journey.IMO there are three main errors people tend to make:
1. Not believing you can do it
2. Believing it will come naturally by studying licks
3. Starting the journey too early when you’re not yet ready for it; you can’t develop improvisation skills without a minimum technical level at the guitar…just my 0.02 € !
Regards,
JM -
Welcome to AM! Ton of guitar wealth to gain here.
Yes, musicians do make Melodie’s on the spot/improvised. But like everything else, it takes practice and an understanding of what to do and when. There are things that go into beyond just knowing a couple of scales; for instance rhythm and use of “negative space” or not playing for part of the solo.
Listen to the Blues masters for inspiration, like BB King…he’ll let measures go by in between notes.
Also, you could play a solo pretty much with one note if you vary the rhythm and space around it. Or just use a small pentatonic box (BB box), and phrase it correctly and you’ve got gold. -
Hi Bill,
It’s dream of mine to be able to make a melody that’s moving totally improvised. It makes me glad to hear the confirmation that it really does exist. One of my favorit guitarists that I have a lot of respect for is Mark Knopfler, he says even when recoding an album they do 3 takes for the entire song and mix and match from different parts of those 3 recordings. and that’s bacially imrovised. I confess with all the respect I still doubt this claim I can’t help it.
If there are any lessons on “negative space” here at AM I’d appreciate if you did indicate it to me.Thanks
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EP 476 is what I’m talking about:
Brian is for the most part just picking notes out of the chords with some fills thrown in at times. It’s a great sound!
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Hi Robbie, as I read through this thread, it’s all great advice, and one additional thought comes to me. Listen to music you like… a LOT. The more you listen with focus and attention, as well as just having music in the background, the more you attune your ear/brain to the sounds you like. This comes back to you as you learn to improvise… you’ll be playing something and your ear/brain says, in effect, “go here next…” as a familiar sound comes to mind. That comes from internalizing a lot of good music along the way. Welcome to AM and enjoy the journey!
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Hi Michael,
What you’re suggesting has been on my mind. One of those things that you keep postponing and your message is going to give me final push I needed to go for it. When I listen to my favorit artists I keep saying to my self here’s great melodic idea, here’s another one, … ad nauseam. Well how about now getting that song, dissect it, and implement the extracted ideas in my imporvisation. It’s more easily said than done of course, but then again nobody said life was easy. 😉 Because after what’s a solo if not an chord embellishment after another chord embellishment of chords. Now that you verbalised it black on white I can’t postpone it any more.
I have brought to my awareness that I am challenged with doing a nice melody and doing it with the right rhythm. I can do 1 of the two well enough but not the two simultaneously.lolThanks
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Welcome Robbie.
I do not think it is possible to come up with beautiful melody or spectacular improvisations without a lot of study and preparation. It looks easy for those who have an uncanny ability to hear melodies in their head and transcribe it on the fingerboard. When you see guitarists engaged in meaningful improvisation, they have done it before. They understand the relationship(s) between scales, chord shapes, rhythm and where to find a melody etc. etc. You have to practice improv by applying what you know over and over. It doesn’t come easily, especially if you don’t know much. Improv isn’t something that comes naturally. It takes a lot of work. Brian at one point touched on this and admitted it takes mindful practice. I think he even said that you can’t improvise without having played something similar before. My two cents.John H.
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